The Far Traveler came to Morrowvia.
This world, hopefully, would provide material for at least a couple of chapters of the Baroness's doctorial thesis. Morrowvia, at the time of its rediscovery, had been an unspoiled world, almost Edenic. Then it had been developed by the Dog Star Line as a tourist resort. Grimes was apprehensive as well as curious. He had liked the planet the way it had been. What would it be like now?
Big Sister was supplying some answers. As the yacht approached her destination, the Mannschenn Drive was shut down at intervals, with a consequent return to the normal continuum, so that a sampling could be made of the commercial and entertainment programs emanating from the planet These were interesting.
The major continent, North Australia, was now one huge tourist trap with luxury hotels, gambling casinos, emporia peddling native artifacts (most of them, Grimes suspected, manufactured on Llirith, a world whose saurian people made a good living by turning out trashy souvenirs to order), Bunny Clubs (here, of course, called Pussy Clubs) and the like. The screen of the Baroness's playmaster glowed and flickered with gaudy pictures of beach resorts and of villages of holiday chalets in the mountain country, with performances of allegedly native dances obviously choreographed by Terrans for Terrans.
And then a once-familiar voice spoke from the instrument and looking out from the screen was a once-familiar face. Her hair was a lustrous, snowy white, her gleaming skin dark brown, the lips of her generous mouth a glistening scarlet. Her eyes were a peculiar greenish yellow and the tips of her small ears were oddly pointed. The cheekbones were prominent, more so than the firm chin. Grimes' regard shifted downward. She was naked, he saw (and as he remembered her). Beneath each breast was a rudimentary nipple. He recalled how when he had first seen her that detail had intrigued him.
She said seductively, purring almost, "Are you tired of the bright lights, the ceaseless round of organized gaiety? Will you finish your vacation more tired than when you started it? Then why not come to Cambridge to relax, to live the natural way, as we lived before the coming of the Earthmen? Share with us our simple pleasures—the hunting of the deer in our forests, the fishing for the great salmon in the clear waters of our rivers . . ."
And neither deer nor salmon, Grimes remembered, bore much resemblance to the deer and salmon of Earth or, even, to those creatures as they had mutated on the other worlds into which they had been introduced. Old Morrow must have been a homesick man; his planet abounded with Terran place names, bestowed by himself, and indigenous animals had been called after their nearest (and not often very near) Earthly counterparts.
"Come to Cambridge," went on the low, alluring voice. "You will not regret it. Come to Cambridge and live for awhile in the rosy dawn of human history. And it will cost you so very little. For two full weeks, with accommodation and food and hunting and fishing trips, the charge for a single adult is a mere one thousand credits. There are special terms for family parties . . ."
She smiled ravishingly. Her teeth were very white between the red lips, in the brown race.
"Please come. I am looking forward so very much to meeting you . . ."
She faded from the screen, was replaced by an advertisement for the Ballarat Casino where, at the time of this broadcast, the imported entertainer Estella di Scorpio had been the star attraction. The Baroness looked and listened briefly then made a sharp gesture. Big Sister cut the sound.
"A friend of yours, Captain Grimes?" asked his employer. "You were looking at her like a lovesick puppy."
"Estella di Scorpio? No, Your Excellency. I don't know the lady, nor do I much want to."
"Not her, Captain. The . . . er . . . lady before her. That indubitably mammalian female."
"That was Maya," he told her. "The Queen of Cambridge."
"A queen, advertising a holiday camp?"
"She's no more than a mayor, really, Your Excellency. Cambridge is—or was when I was there—just a little town."
She said, "I think that we shall land at this Cambridge rather than at the Melbourne spaceport. After all, you have landed there before in Seeker."
"Things were different then, Your Excellancy," he told her. "There was no Aerospace Control There were no rules and regulations. We just looked around for a reasonably clear and flat patch of ground, then sat down on it. But now we shall have to use the spaceport to get our Inward Clearance from the authorities."
"Shall we?" she asked. "Shall we?